Brennan: Crackdown shows tide has turned on MLB dopers

Jul. 31, 2013
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Bryan Von Declan shows his disappointment for Milwaukee Brewers left fielder Ryan Braun (not pictured) by taping over the name on the back of a jersey at Miller Park after Braun was suspended last week for the season for violating MLB drug policies. / Benny Sieu, USA TODAY Sports

by Christine Brennan, USA TODAY Sports

by Christine Brennan, USA TODAY Sports

Any day now, perhaps within hours, Major League Baseball will lower the boom on its cheaters, completing the game's biggest drug bust of the Steroid Era. When the news comes, we'll mark the moment as an unprecedented turning point, as a game changer, as the time baseball finally got tough on doping after decades of avoidance and deceit.

In reality, though, MLB has spent many months laying the groundwork for this overdue crackdown, expected to ensnare about nine players. After years of stonewalling from the players' union and ineffectiveness from the owners' offices, MLB has finally come to grips with its massive performance-enhancing drug problem.

How things have changed for MLB. The game's leadership didn't have the gumption or the wherewithal to stop Barry Bonds as he controversially marched toward the career home-run record in 2007, tainting the most revered record in sports.

But it is using its power to stop its cheaters now. From the moment the Biogenesis scandal broke in the Miami New Times in January 2013, MLB has been doing something it never had done before: investigate its own.

Ten years earlier, when the BALCO news broke, ensnaring Bonds along with Olympic gold medalist Marion Jones, among others, MLB wasn't prepared for such a massive doping scandal and had no ability to investigate. Bonds was eventually convicted of obstructing justice in U.S. District Court, but was never stripped of his home run totals or kicked out of the game.

The Olympic world, though, is three decades ahead of MLB in drug testing, as well as in knowledge, sophistication and penalties, so Jones was sent to prison and stripped of her gold medals.

Now, however, MLB is coming closer every day to the Olympic model of catching the bad guys. It was able to send investigators to Miami to gather evidence against the players and obtain the testimony of clinic founder Tony Bosch. When it does penalize the players who doped, the punishments will be based on what are known as "non-analytical positives" â?? documents, testimony, e-mails, phone records and the like.

Positive drug tests are no longer needed to catch a cheater, making the PED conviction process much more like a criminal trial, in which someone can be convicted of a crime without, say, a weapon ever being produced as evidence. That's how the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency caught Lance Armstrong last year and banned him for life.

In baseball's old world order, if a player could get off PEDs in time to not fail a drug test, or use a substance to mask that drug, he was safe from being caught.

Now, all that chicanery no longer matters if the documents and records exist, and suppliers are willing (or forced) to talk.

It probably won't be long before not only suppliers but players themselves start fingering other players if the reaction to Ryan Braun's season-ending suspension is any indication.

After years of stunning silence, MLB players past and present are finally speaking out against the cheaters who are stealing their headlines â?? and in some cases their titles, records and bonuses.

Los Angeles Dodger outfielder Matt Kemp, the 2011 MVP runner-up, said point blank that Braun, the 2011 MVP winner, should give up that title.

Detroit Tigers pitcher Max Scherzer lambasted Braun. "I think it's absolutely despicable how he handled it," Scherzer told the Detroit Free Press. "I'm glad he got caught. He went out of his way to try to bring people down and cover up his lies and now he looks like Lance Armstrong."

Scherzer, who is one of the Tigers' union representatives, went so far as to say the contract that is set to pay Braun $113 million after this season should be voided. "You gotta start cutting out contracts," he said.

We've never before heard anger like this from a major-leaguer regarding PED use. Here's guessing, though, that we will from now on. They will only get more vocal as the days and weeks wear on, and the magnitude of their colleagues' cheating comes to light. Consider what that might mean: After that tirade, how could someone like Scherzer not turn in a player he believes is cheating in the future?

It's a fascinating new world order in baseball. We've already seen general managers forced to make decisions to replace suspected PED users in their midst. Scherzer's Tigers obtained Boston Red Sox shortstop Jose Iglesias in a trade Wednesday to replace Jhonny Peralta, one of the Biogenesis Boys, when Peralta is presumably suspended for 50 games.

Here's hoping the Tigers never bring Peralta back, even though his suspension would end before MLB's post-season, just as the San Francisco Giants decided not to bring back Melky Cabrera on their run to the World Series title last year. Perhaps we'll see the day sometime soon when GM's won't want to touch returning PED users. That day isn't here yet, but we can only hope.

In the meantime, tougher penalties are coming. MLB currently gives out a 50-game suspension for a first offense, 100 games for a second and a lifetime ban for a third. Now that the players and the public have lost patience with cheaters, be they Armstrong or Braun, the time is right for MLB to adopt Olympic-style drug punishment: two years for a first offense, a lifetime ban for a second.

"Braun and society, deny, deny deny! Good for @MLB doing a great job," Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench said on Twitter. Former MLB pitcher Mark Mulder chimed in as well: "Hmmm 2011 MVP. Drives me crazy that this continues to happen in baseball. Really sad actually."

MLB's embarrassing silence has been shattered. The drumbeat is growing louder and louder. This is all new and different for MLB. It's about time.